Question CPU Management

[Thomas5589]

Hello everyone.
I am creating this post as I need to understand how to balance the CPU load for my PC.
Since a few weeks my laptop is very slow and i tried everything until yesterday where I started to figure out Handbrake and MKVToolnix are the cause of the slowness.
To kae it simple : I run Handbrake to compress a video leveraging on H265 and all the other tasks are getting very crazy slow, even a simple copy and paste take ages.
I checked the performance tab in task manager and figured out this : CPU 95-99% - temperature 60 Celsius. GPU 40% - temperature 35 Celcius.
I begin to suspect the heavy usage of CPU is slowing down all the other processes but this is something I don't really get as a noob PC builder, there are 4 cores so i assume one core for Handbrake and the three remaining ones for other tasks so pc is never freezing. How can I tweak this workload balance so that enconding might be a bit longer but doesn't freeze all the rest please ?
I have a B450 mother board with AMD ryzen 5 - 5600 + 2 Corsair DD4 - 3200 + AMD Radeaon RX6600.
It is definitely not a "beast"but I was not expecting so much of lag and freeze for simple tasks like compressing one video.
I use Window 11 Pro very last version updates.
If anyone can help on this please ? Thank you.

 

[Lafong]

Everything was great for a long while until "a few weeks ago", when doing the very same tasks?

 

[helpstar]

did you enable AMD VCE in the settings of the video tab?

limit the used cores in settings of handbrake, if not available (cause I don´t know this app well), limit the app by the windows task manager: https://www.thewindowsclub.com/processor-affinity-windows

 

[Thomas5589]

I will try this, thank you. But do I really need to manage this balancing ? I would think this can be done automatically somewhere like if Windows see that one process is using 99% of CPU then it allocates some cores to other processes ...

 

[Thomas5589]

Everything was great for a long while until "a few weeks ago", when doing the very same tasks?

Not really sure that this is the issue, I have a non responsive PC for quite long and tried everything from DDU reinstall drivers, checked temperatures, reinstalled windows, checked virus and Hard drives.... but figured out the two causes of system freeze :
1. Use handbrake or MKV Toolnix.
2. Copy and paste files (Same drive, different drives, sata or USB same freezing in all scenarios).
I am left with not really knowing what else to check. When I do exactly the same operations using a basic old laptop I have a long Hnadbrake encoding but nothing freezeing like that.
Really, I don't know what to do now except assuming there is an issue with Handbrake and see if I canchange settings there...

 

[SkyNetRising]

2. Copy and paste files (Same drive, different drives, sata or USB same freezing in all scenarios).

Check health of your storage devices.
Use HDtune health, post screenshots.
(upload to imgur.com and post link)

 

[Thomas5589]

Check health of your storage devices.
Use HDtune health, post screenshots.
(upload to imgur.com and post link)

Will do but I changed my disks very recently (1 year) and they are all Good 90% in cristal disk. But will send screen shots tonight.

 

[Thomas5589]

Check health of your storage devices.
Use HDtune health, post screenshots.
(upload to imgur.com and post link)

I have posted the link here :
Link

 

[SkyNetRising]

Possibly bad sata data cable for 870 QVO.
Replace the cable.

What is model name for 3rd drive?
You have cropped out the model name string.

 

[Thomas5589]

Possibly bad sata data cable for 870 QVO.
Replace the cable.

What is model name for 3rd drive?
You have cropped out the model name string.

Thank you. For the 870 QVO is there anything specific for the cable ? I bought the cable last month for this drive and it is a ugreen 30796 SATA 3.0 cable. I didn't know cables can be an issue.
Third drive is WDC WD40EZAZ-4TB.

 

[SkyNetRising]

Thank you. For the 870 QVO is there anything specific for the cable ? I bought the cable last month for this drive and it is a ugreen 30796 SATA 3.0 cable. I didn't know cables can be an issue.

Drive reported CRC errors are cumulative. Could be also result of previously used cable (before change).

Third drive is WDC WD40EZAZ-4TB.

That is SMR drive. Are you using it for your video re-compression projects?
SMR drives are not suitable for intensive write workloads.
They are basically suitable only for write once/read only use scenarios. Like user data storage, archives, backups.

 

[Thomas5589]

Drive reported CRC errors are cumulative. Could be also result of previously used cable (before change).

That is SMR drive. Are you using it for your video re-compression projects?
SMR drives are not suitable for intensive write workloads.
They are basically suitable only for write once/read only use scenarios. Like user data storage, archives, backups.

Ok maybe I need to change most of the cables, the samsung was not used after buying for quyite long time, I am going to check this.
SMR Drive i am not sure, the encoding is done on the Toshiba drive.